I did say ” you’ve just stuffed up getting a decent player responding” and completely embarrassed me in front of the rest of the people I had been trying to do serious rated bgs with.

Sex does not sell well in Trade chat.

Sexy beefy guy with water background…

They use sex to sell games ( just look at the marketing stunts for Saints Row 3 where “scantily clad women gave away free petrol” in Sydney as seen on their youtube here and there is certainly is sexual overtones within game. We also can’t deny that some class dances, wiggle, shimmy, shake., crouch grabs and a very ‘sexy’ way.

Besides Lap dances being offered to potential healers to try to get them to join the RBG’s, there are on occasion people who advertise in trade, who will RP for gold, will table dance/ strip/ pretend to be your girlfriend / offer to send you pics . Even this weekend a prolific glyph seller in trade chat changed their lets say, marketing strategy to include a sexual offer. ,

They are never taken seriously in trade, even if they were genuine offers, they get trolled, ridiculed or Ignored.

Yes there is a difference in selling sex, and using sex to sell, but neither works in-game.

Services for sale are ignored and the person who offers to cook their buff food in a lovely purple dress, enchant their gear in under daks, doesn’t get any more trade business.

I think there are a couple of reasons why using sex as marketing within Wow trade doesn’t work.

1. Virtual goods

Your not selling a real loaf of bread /energy drink. You are selling Pixels within a pixel world, that may have an influence on the game ” Like buff food or enchants” but you cannot hold, and feel the goods.

2. Virtual experience

The lap dance would not be real It’s not that exciting to have toon ‘standing’ on your lap dancing their racial dance. We don’t have control over our Avatars to the point where realistic interaction could happen. Avatars as sex objects well that’s a whole other line – we are well aware of RP in Wow, but taking your toon and simulating certain acts using your avatars – each to his/her own. A lot of people are very uncomfortable about this idea.

3. Your not a real girl.

There has to be more boys pretending to be girls and asking for free stuff and hand outs than girls who ask for free stuff and hand outs, and most people know this. There are no girls on the internet anyway, so even if you did take up that offer for whatever reason you have no idea who is actually climbing in your lap.

4. We are desensitized to sexy imagery in-game.

( though to give people their due, while wandering round SW looking for examples the worst I saw was cleavage and naval) and we also ignore the casual semi nudity of the person running around in the ugly brown ( or blue) underwear that most classes seem to have. Your not special in any way because your removed your pants.

( I did try to design a better bra – not sure how well it would take off though. )

This isn’t meant to be a post against sexy santa outfits, yes my toon has it, and my warrior wore her metal g with pride and much amusement. and my hunter really likes her red little mail number.

But using sex to sell doesn’t seem to be a valid way of marketing your goods in trade chat to fellow players. It might get your noticed, but if it’s for stuff like recruitment for a raid, or a Rated BG than anyone who is half way serious will think less of you, and if it’s for goods we are not picking your service or trade goods because it comes with something extra.

So it’s Tuesday night and I’m bored so I thought I’d go hit up some blogs and I remembered yours. Hello!
One of the first few posts I see, was this one and of course it caught my eye. I generally try to stay out of public wow/gender debates becaue I feel I’m a little too passionate about them and get quite heated (late night vent rantings to close friends aside)…

But wow, I AM SO ANGRY someone did this to you… I’m sure they found themselves quite hilarious and thought it would pull in some bger’s but honestly, I cannot get over someone saying that in trade! Good on you for leaving, I hope if anyone else from our guild was with you they did the same…

As infuriating as it is however, the more I sit and think about it, the more irritated I become for other reasons also, honestly, while I’m not a fan of playing the ‘blame the girl’ game, I think girls have a lot to answer for as far as conduct goes in this game (not you obviously, I’m speaking generally as a pre-cursor to that guys behaviour).

It’s fair to say all female players encounter the male muppets that you’ve mentioned in this post, the ones who think it’s fine and dandy to embarass girls or make their gender a point of notice – but how many girls out there in wowland LAP this up? A disturbing number.

I think we are extremely lucky that in our guild, we have a posse of females that earn their own way and are talented in their own right, I think we are quite sheltered in daily ‘guild life’ from the ‘other extreme’ of female gamers that love this kind of attention and lap it up as a point of focus and spotlight-whoring… It makes me so angry that females who DO just want to PLAY the game for themselves get caught in the crossfire of this nonsense. I feel like we’ll constantly be battling a ‘mixed message’ of sorts…

Then again, I guess it’s the same for the guys. We females are constantly having bad experiences with the immature, sexist idiots that can’t understand the line between innocent joking and being a jerk – despite trying to keep an open mind and whatnot, I’d be lying if I said most female gamers probably act a little gaurded and distrusting of the wow-boy intentions…